French press review 11 September 2015

A stand-off over French asylum quotas sparks a war of figures between left and right-wing politicians in Paris. Vladmir Putin's strange manoeuvres in Syria raise eyebrows in the West about his hidden agenda in the Middle East. And the discovery of a new 2-million-year-old Homo naledi leaves paleontologists scratching their heads. 

DR

The refugee crisis in Europe continues to dominate the front pages with Le Monde reporting that the airstrikes launched by the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and atrocities committed by the Islamic State armed group in Syria have caused nearly a fifth of the coiuntry’s 22 million inhabitants to flee the country.

That represents an estimated 4.3 million refugees, and according to the paper, 4 million of them have sought refuge in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Le Monde also reports from the Parisian suburb of Cergy where 170 Syrian refugees have been resettled following their arrival in France on Wednesday. The evening newspaper also lists a small group of French mayors worried by the influx of migrants reaching France.

Some like the centrist mayor of Frethun in the northern Pas de Calais region, with a high concentration of UK-bound migrants, says they are not necessarily racist or driven by zeal to over-protect their citizens, arguing that all they want is to be heard.

Le Monde underlines that a mere 300,000 of them (less than 10 per cent of the refugees) have managed to reach Europe. The figures contradict claims by a growing community of populists and racists, warning of an Islamist invasion that is capable of changing Europe’s Christian culture.

Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is the leader of the main opposition Les Republicains conservative party, is the subject of scorn by Le Monde after his long interview to Le Figaro in which he calls for a total rewriting of the Schengen accords enshrining the free movement of persons across the European Union.

According to Le Monde, Sarkozy’s idea that refugees allowed into other European countries will end up in France is only intended to whip up populist sentiments. The newspaper also highlights remarks by top Sarkozy ally Brice Hortefeux which are apparently intended to play to the conservative leader’s tune.

“Let us not cede a foot of territory to the Front National in the fight against delinquency and clandestine immigration," Hortefeux said.

Libération slams Sarkozy for being out of touch with realities after he offered to push for a special status for war refugees and to send them back home once conditions there improve. The left-leaning newspaper invites him to read the Geneva Convention ratified by France and 148 other countries in 1951, as well as the 2001 and 2005 EU directives granting war refugees (in case of a massive influx) three years of temporary asylum and return to their countries once the situation improves.

Le Figaro is monitoring the war of words being fought by the opposition Les Republicains and the government over the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers the country can take. The government said it hoped to take in 24,000 migrants, but the conservative opposition denounced the figures as false, arguing that the Socialist-led government published the figures to conceal its irresponsible policies.

Corinne Narassiguin, spokesperson for the Socialist party, fired back accusing Sarkozy of facing a hard time in distancing himself from Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

Le Figaro is quite disturbed by what it describes as “strange manoeuvring by the Russian military in Syria”. The right-wing newspaper says the West has monitored a spectacular reinforcement of Russian military positions in the north-east of the country, where military transport planes and navy freighters have been seen off-loading armoured vehicles and other mysterious supplies in recent weeks.

According to the Le Figaro, some Russian soldiers deployed in the region were in a particularly buoyant mood, posting selfies taken at their new work places. Hence the newspaper’s view that Nato and the West need to verify what role the impulsive Putin is playing in the Western and Arab-backed coalition fighting against the Islamic State armed group, and whether he may be trying to conceal his game in Ukraine.

La Croix voices pessimism about the outcome of Sunday’s regional elections in Russia. According to the Catholic newspaper, the process will only tighten Putin’s grip over the country after the silencing of the opposition.

And l’Humanité welcomes the decision reached by the United Nations to fly the Palestinian flag during its upcoming annual General Assembly in New York. The moment is highly awaited by Palestinians as the symbol of their victory over Israeli colonisation, crows the Communist daily.

L’Humanité claims that even if the flag’s presence in front of the UN building will remain a symbolic gesture, it will constitute a glimmer of hope at a moment when the peace talks with Israel are in total impasse.

And Le Figaro takes up the spectacular discovery of a new human ancestor in a South African cave. According to the newspaper, researchers at Witwatersrand University who exhumed the 15 hominids from the site outside of Johannesburg judged them to be as old as 2 million years, adding that they belong to an unknown species.

Prior to the discovery the oldest human specie found by palaeontologists was 100,000 years old, which means that the diminutive Homo naledi may be mankind’s oldest ancestor.